NPR News Now - NPR News: 03-24-2025 1AM EDT

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

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Following the news out of Washington, D.C. can be overwhelming. I'm Scott Detrow and NPR has a podcast that can help. It's called Trump's Terms, stories about big changes the 47th president is pursuing on his own terms. Each episode is short, usually around five minutes or so. We keep it calm and factual. We help you follow what matters and we leave out what doesn't. Listen to Trump's Terms from NPR. Live from NPR News in Washington, D.C., I'm Dale Willman.

Russia launched a drone attack on targets across Ukraine overnight on Sunday. Local officials say at least seven people were killed in the attacks. The strikes took place as Ukraine began talks with the U.S. and Saudi Arabia on a possible ceasefire. Russia begins talks with the U.S. on Monday. Trump administration special envoy Steve Witkoff says he's confident those talks will have positive results. I think that you're going to see in Saudi Arabia on Monday some real progress, particularly

as it affects a Black Sea ceasefire on ships between both countries. And from that, you'll naturally gravitate into a full-on shooting ceasefire. Wittkopf was speaking on a Fox News Sunday. Wildfires have burned more than 4,000 acres across parts of western North Carolina. Those fires have prompted mandatory evacuations. As Gerard Albert III from Blue Ridge Public Radio reports, the region is still recovering from last year's Hurricane Helene.

The fires in Polk County are some of the biggest the area has seen in decades. Officials say low humidity, high winds and lots of downed trees from Hurricane Helene are making fighting the fire unusually challenging. Bobby Arledge is the county's fire marshal. People are still trying to recover. So this fire now, though, on top of that, it's been a nightmare. All the debris and the blowdowns and stuff from the hurricane is doing nothing but fueling these fires. The North Carolina Forest

Service is leading the firefighting efforts and plans to receive help from crews throughout the south and as far west as California. For NPR News, I'm Gerard Albert III in Asheville. Police in New Mexico say four people have now been arrested in connection with the Friday night shooting in Las Cruces that left three people dead and 15 others injured. The shooting took place during an unauthorized car show while about 200 people were attending. Police say each of those arrested could face at least one murder charge along with other

possible charges. In Turkey, the imprisoned mayor of Istanbul appeared in court on Friday for the first time since his arrest set off the largest popular protests seen in the country for more than a decade. As Duri Buskerin reports, Mayor Ekrem Emamoglu is a key rival of Turkish President Recep Erdogan. After Emamoglu denied all charges, a judge ordered him to remain in detention for the duration of his trial alongside several municipal employees also charged in the case.

For days, protests have grown in size across Turkey. More than 300 people were arrested late Saturday, with protesters saying they were beaten with batons, tear-gassed, and hit with plastic bullets. The Turkish Interior Ministry has announced that İmamoğlu and two district heads have been removed from their duties, clearing the way for the government to install an Erdogan loyalist to lead Istanbul. For NPR News, I'm Dari Buskaran. And this is NPR News.

People don't remember anything from the time that they were babies, but scientists wonder if that's because people don't make memories when they're infants. Reporter Ari Daniels says that new research may hold the answer. One of the hardest parts of this study was getting the babies into the fMRI machine. Infants in many ways are the worst possible subject population. That's Yale cognitive neuroscientist Nick Turk Brown. His team showed infants a series of images they'd never seen before while snapping photos of their brains, including the hippocampus. A region that we know is super important for memory in adults. Tristan Yates is a cognitive

neuroscientist at Columbia. The more active the hippocampus was when seeing an image for the first time, the more likely babies were to remember it later, meaning that infants seem to form memories. Whether we can retrieve them later in life remains an open question. For NPR News, I'm Ari Daniel. Segway is recalling about 220,000 of its scooters that have been sold across the U.S. That company says they present a potential falling hazard that's resulted in user injuries, including bruises and broken bones.

The folding mechanism on the two scooter models can fail during use, causing the handlebars or the stem of the scooter to collapse. Second Lady Usha Vance will be traveling to Greenland this week. The trip comes as President Trump continues to suggest that the U.S. could take control of that Arctic island. Vance is expected to visit historical sites and learn about Greenland's heritage. Greenland is a self-governing region of Denmark. I'm Dale Willman, NPR News in Washington.